Keep It Simple, Stupid

We have a poster on the wall at Clubwell HQ. Four words: Keep It Simple, Stupid. KISS. It’s a business principle, but it’s also the most important health principle I know.

The Stoics practised it two thousand years ago. Marcus Aurelius stripped his decisions back to what was within his control and ignored everything else. Epictetus taught that happiness comes from wanting less, not acquiring more. Simplicity wasn’t weakness. It was strategy.

The Buddhists built an entire philosophy around it. Suffering comes from attachment to complexity, to craving, to the endless pursuit of more. The path out? Simplicity. Presence. Enough.

I even currently have the message “I control my response, nothing else”, on my mobile home screen.

Now here’s the thing. The more we learn about the human body, the more complicated it gets. The microbiome alone contains trillions of organisms that we’re only beginning to understand. The interplay between gut bacteria, hormones, neurotransmitters and immune function is staggeringly complex.

But every time the science advances, every time we peel back another layer, we keep arriving at the same simple answer. Eat real food. The food your ancestors ate. The food that existed before factories, before food scientists, before E numbers and emulsifiers and shelf-life engineering.

Your great-grandmother didn’t read ingredient lists because her food didn’t have ingredient lists. She cooked meals from whole ingredients that she recognised, and her generation didn’t suffer from the epidemic of obesity, type 2 diabetes and chronic disease that we see today.

The science is complex. The solution is simple. Follow ancestral precedent. Eat food that your body evolved to recognise. Move like your ancestors moved (get your steps up). Stop overcomplicating it.

Your action today: Look at today through ancestral eyes. Keep everything as simple a possible. Simplicity wins.